I’ve noticed an increase in new Rpers. That’s pretty awesome, fresh meat-er, new people is always fantastic. So if you read my first guide (The Q/A) I gave general RP tips. However, I’ve noticed people seem a bit confused on how conflict can work. So I dove into more depth for you guys. It’s long, but the read is worth it. Sneaky thanks to LupisDarkmoon, TygerDarkstorm, and Saturo, whose names I borrowed for my examples.

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You’ve created your plot, your characters, and you have some friends to RP with. You’re off to a good start. Inevitably, there will be conflict. So how do you RP fighting without godmoding?

What is god-moding?

As I explained in the Q/A, godmoding is when you force another character into a situation where they can’t get out of without some extreme RPing or making stuff up. Or, they’ll be forced to ignore what you said in extreme cases. And that’s no fun for you or them. Here’s an example of god-moding:

Azunara swiped her claws at Saturo, knocking her down. She then rips her into pieces and starts looking for anything neat or shiny on her corpse.

Essentially, I just knocked down Saturo, (Without permission.), killed her (Again, no permission.) and took her stuff. Namely, I just god-moded and screwed her over. She can’t do anything to defend herself. Better wording would be as following:

Azunara charges, trying to knock down and pin Saturo.

There is an EXTREMELY important word here. A suggestion word, namely, ‘trying’. It means I haven’t connected. I’ve said what I plan to do, and Saturo now has the choice between getting hit, dodging or parrying. Trying can also be replaced with ‘aiming’, ‘planning’, or ‘attempting’.

Conflict and Where it Shows Up

It can appear anywhere. Maybe you’re a mercenary hired to try and kill someone. Or protect someone. Maybe you disagree with someone ICly. RP conflict can happen anywhere, be it forums, events, in-game, table top, what have you. So let’s say you’re fighting in-game. There’s two method I use to do this. (Your mileage may vary. Maybe you have your own idea. This is just two common ways.)

Dueling

Plain, straight, simple, throw down the flag and go. But that isn’t always fair. A mage vs. a DK, a healer vs. DPS, a level 85 vs. a 30, or a Cata-geared player vs. a Naxxramas-geared character; all of these have extreme disadvantages over their opponent. The DK would slaughter the mage, the 85 would cream the 30, the DPS would murder the healer, and the superior geared player will own the lesser geared character. Besides, it doesn’t allow much RP unless you deliberately pause: It just allows straight out combat. So here is where the second method steps in.

Rolling

This method requires the /roll system Blizzard put in. Let’s take that level 30 vs. 85 example. In a duel, this is a horrible match up. The 30 wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance, they’d be ripped apart without mercy. The rolling system relies on luck more so than sheer brute power. The 30, while still in a pinch, has a chance. So let’s take me vs. Saturo again. I’m the 30, she’s the 85.

So what will happen is we’ll use our levels to decide if our attacks hit or not. We use level because it is a measure of strength. The level 30 me has less experience in the field and less training then the level 85 Saturo.

79 is much bigger than 24, so Saturo would successfully dodge my attack, or defend herself, or whatever method she chooses. Example:

Saturo raises her weapon and deflects the pounce.

Here, she deflected the attack. Let’s say I get lucky. I roll a 29, she rolls a 15. In this case, I would get a hit on Sat. Even here, though, it shouldn’t be anything too spectacular. I’m only level 30 in this example, after all. Good attack:

Azunara charges, slashing with her claws.

No usage of the suggestion words (try, aim, plan, etc.) because we know it hits. Saturo can acknowledge my attack with this.

Saturo recoils, her shoulder sliced by the druid’s claws.

A bad attack by me would be:

Azunara tears off Saturo's arm.

Yes, I do get an attack….but I still can’t do that, because tearing off limbs isn’t just a flesh wound, it’s a pretty big injury. By using a simple slash (replaced by rake, slice, smash, bash, etc,) Saturo can decide the consequences of the attack.

Well...What About Forum RP?

Forum RP can be executed in a similar manner as the rolling system functions. However, it focuses more on the suggestion words than the raw fighting of duels or the random luck of rolling.

A lot of it relies on trust. You trust your other forum members not to blow you to bits, to give you a chance. Let’s take another example. Saturo and Lupis vs. Tyger and me. We can’t logically do duels or rolling, because we’re on a forums. So you wing it kinda like this. I even color coded it.

Tyger moves first, swinging a weapon at Lupis.

A lot of things can happen here. Saturo can defend Lupis/take the blow, or Lupis can defend herself/take the blow. We’re banking on common sense and fairness. You will get hurt. You are not immortal. Don’t stand there and spam dodging, because then it just become pointless and stupid, and then nobody has fun. This is what you want to avoid:

Lupis dodges and retaliates. (This alone isn’t too bad. Fairly logical.) Tyger dodges, swinging, but Lupis dodges. She strikes back,but Tyger ducks out of the way. (Getting iffy. The dodges here are questionable.) Lupis and Saturo strike simultaneously, going for Tyger,but she easily dodges the both of them. (Here it crosses the line. The stream of dodges from both sides wasn’t too common or practical, but dodging two people simultaneously?)

Good:

Lupis dodges, retaliating.Her weapon hits Tyger, but she manages to swing back.It sinks into Lupis’ arm, and she falls back to recuperate.

See? A rather logical fight. Other Tips:

Scene, Scene, Scene

If you start a fight in the middle of the Trade District, the guards will get curious and check it out. If it gets bad enough, the guards will stop you and you get to make your way to the Stockades. If you chose to battle elsewhere, such as Elywnn, the worse you have to worry about is a really big spider saying “Hai!” Breastplate and Sword

Think about your armor and weapons. A paladin in plate, no matter how buff or well traveled, will never move as well as a mage in cloth. He’s just so encumbered with his armor and weapons, while the mage has its cloth robes. Consider as well the weaponry. Arrows, swords, axes, what have you will hurt the paladin a lot less than it will with the mage.Injuries and Death

Never, ever, ever, ever force another character into death. It’s rude, and just will get you ignored. It is the RPer’s choice whether to kill their character or not, not yours. Ever. However, you can kill your own characters. (Assuming the other RPer’s won’t kill you for killing off their favorite character of yours. If I killed off Azu or Kozri in one of the RPs I’m in, I’d be in trouble. xD) Your warlock can kill your paladin, if you want it too. Totally valid.

And injuries? Like I said, you’ll get hurt. So you can heal if you have healing capabilities, (expect it to be draining though. Just like you lose mana, it’s not free in RP either. It makes you tired.) or use a potion. And if all else fails, run!

That sums up everything. Hopefully you managed to read through this (6 pages written, 4 pages in Word. Sheesh.) and learned a few things. It’s okay if you make mistakes. I still do, after all. It happens to the best of us. All you have to do is realize you made one, apologize, and fix what you can. Then, move on. If you’re willing to learn and put in an effort, other RPers will always be happy to take you. If you try to be lazy and not bother, you’ll end up in a pinch when none of them want to tolerate your character that just slaughtered Thrall.

Anyway, nice post. I think, for me, the biggest challenge learning to RP with you guys was figuring out how to do combat without coming off way to OP. I remember just watching to see how you guys did it.

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Lord Godfrey wrote:

Some people only want to watch the world burn. Others want to be the ones responsible for burning it...

But.....it does have its awesome moments. I've met some fascinating roleplayers. I had a draenei mage and human priest picking on my worgen hunter near the Cathedral...smacking her snout with a wooden fan and poking/prodding her, trying to piss her off. Draenei was yelling at her, saying she was a monster and scaring the kids and demanded she go into her human form or she was gonna report her to the authorties. Jessi was just going "What the hell! I didnt do anything!" ><;

May I also suggest mentioning how your character shouldn't always be dodging, when the player to attacking example:Rubybeam aims to launch a arcane shot at at rubybloodrubyblood dodged the arcane shot, with easeI guess that could go with godmodding but there isn't that much smart roleplayers out there and it would be good to add sorry if i'm bugging you alsobefore you asked I used one of my alts because I didn't want to be insulting anyone

Awesome guide! Thank you for writing this. xDI'm extremely picky with some things in RP, I must admit. Extremely. Picky. But when it comes to characters, I don't care what your character is - so long as you know how to play it. If you want to be... I dunno... A half blue, half bronze dragon? Well, that'll be REALLY hard to pull off (Unless Indi and Kozri hook up. /nudge /nudge /wink /wink). But if you have a logical, lore-correct reason? GO ahead. Just play it well.Now, I AM picky when it comes to -some- characters. For instance, if I see a Demon Hunter, I immediately read through their MRP description. If I don't see anything about not having any eyes, then I'm not really interested in RPing. The cutting out of a Demon Hunter's eyes is a ritual that must be done to become a Demon Hunter.I've met One Demon Hunter that pulled this off. He was awesome.

Koz is popular because he's awesome. :->And he's a dragon that is WELL PLAYED. Indigosa, Kozri and... um... whatshisname. Sarayu or something like that. All dragons that are well played!Not like that random belf that was wandering around yelling that he was a netherdrake. -.-

I agree. Indi is very well played. I have facepalm moments on Koz occasionally. It's a very fine line between well-played and Mary Sue. So I try very hard to be careful. Heck, that's why I kept him crippled for a bit. He may be a dragon, but he was poisoned, electrocuted, and barely got any sleep.

I'm pretty sure any dragon that was poisoned, electrocuted and sleep-deprived wouldn't be doing much. In fact, a dragon that was any one of those things.Poor Koz, almost all my characters are horrible to you.

I'm a lot like Saturo (the gnome, not the forum-person!) when it comes to my characters. Put them through way too much just to see when they'll break. Or just slowly tear them apart emotionally (or not) to see what makes them tick.Of course, those are always random side-stories/stories in my head. I'm still horrible to my characters in actually good stories though.

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